


With a Capital T and that Rhymes with C and that Stands for Agent Barton

by the_wordbutler



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 12:26:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson knows he's in trouble.</p><p>The problem is, this isn't the kind of trouble he expected--or prepared for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With a Capital T and that Rhymes with C and that Stands for Agent Barton

 

            He realizes he’s in trouble when the bell on the diner’s front door jingles.

 

            The diner is, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere.  It’s one of the things he looked for when he set up the meeting.  He’d had a list: one-stoplight town, fewer than three hundred people, at least fifty miles between it and the next state-sponsored rest-stop, and a motel with a maximum occupancy of fifty.  And, of course, a diner.

 

            It’s safer, that way.  The smaller the likelihood of the middle-aged waitress (Delores) remembering your face, the smaller the likelihood that there’ll be an unfortunate electrical fire two days after you leave.

 

            Not that he, himself, knew anything about those.

 

            But other agents—well.

 

            Either way, the bell jangles while Delores is pouring his coffee.  He closes his eyes, just for a half-second, and wills it to be the wind.

 

            Except then Delores says, “Lemme get you a menu, sugar,” and he knows that the wind is the least of his worries.

 

            “He’s with me,” he says without looking up.

 

            Delores stops pouring his coffee.  The mug is half-empty.  Given that he slept on a lumpy motel mattress the night before, he thinks that’s some small measure of injustice, under-filling his coffee cup.  “You—sure?”

 

            He wonders how it looks, to an outsider.  Well-dressed man with a suit and tie, complaining of car trouble, promising that a colleague’s coming shortly to fix the problem—

 

            And then, there’s Clint Barton.

 

            Clint, who slides into the booth, the red vinyl creaking as he settles.  He’s tired, with a night’s worth of stubble and mussed-up bedhead.  Even S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are used to staying places with the basic amenities.  Or at least, with single-serve coffee pots. 

 

            The sleeves of his hooded sweatshirt end just over the backs of his knuckles.  You wouldn’t think it’d suit Clint—until you _knew_ Clint.

 

            “I’m sure,” he says, but he doesn’t look at Delores.  No, he’s still watching Clint.

 

            “Okay.”  She doesn’t finish pouring the coffee.  “You want anything, sugar?”

 

            “Nah.”  Funny, Clint’s not watching Delores, either.

 

            “Not even a coffee?”  Poor Delores.  She’s going to deserve her perfectly-calculated fifteen-percent tip (people remember big tippers) an hour from now.  “What about breakfast?  We got a special.  Country-fried steak and eggs.  I think we’ve even got fresh gravy, made this morning, if I’m not—”

 

            He sips his coffee to avoid smiling at Clint’s full-body twitch.  He’s not easy to horrify.  It’s fun to watch.  “I’m good.”

 

            “If you say so,” Delores replies, but then she’s walking away.

 

            He sips his coffee a second time before he puts the mug down, handle pointed toward himself.  He knows it won’t matter where he points the handle, or if there even _is_ a handle, and he’s right; the second the mug’s settled on the table, Clint stretches across and picks it up.  Two swallows later, he returns it.

 

            Yeah, he’s exhausted.

 

            “Could’ve woke me up,” he says, after a few seconds.

 

            “I could have, but I’m also not the one who drove all night.”

 

            “Not my fault you go all zombie when you drive in the dark.”

 

            “One time.”

 

            “Sitwell told me about Alabama.”

 

            He stops, the coffee mug— _his_ coffee mug—halfway to his lips.  “Did he?” he asks.

 

            Alabama was supposed to be—classified.  Not for any official reason, but because—

 

            Clint smirks and stretches his arms along the back of the booth.  “He likes screwdrivers a whole lot,” he answers.

 

            —of exactly what is happening right now.  Sitwell is about to owe him.  He just doesn’t know that yet.

 

            He takes another sip of coffee, but as soon as he sets the mug down, Clint’s fingers are around it.  He’d slept through the alarm and the sound of New Mexico’s loudest shower.  He probably doesn’t remember the promise to be back soon, or the kiss.  This is the stand-in, sharing coffee across the table while Delores pretends not to stare.

 

            “You shouldn’t be here,” he points out.

 

            “Actually, this is exactly where I should be,” Clint replies, shrugging.  “My handler ordered me to Santa Barbara, picked me up at the airport, and whisked me away without any extra information.  Said I was on—what’d you say, again?”

 

            Sometimes, it’s a struggle not to give in and smile.  “Security detail.”

 

            “Right.  That.”  He sets the mug back on the table but keeps his hands around it.  “And I figure if I’m on your security detail, _Agent Coulson_ , I should be where you are.”  He raises his eyes.  The codename is supposed to refer to his hyper-accurate marksmanship, but his eyes are sharp.  Hawk’s eyes.  “The whole time.”

 

            _Agent Coulson_ starts to respond, but there’s Delores again, this time with his breakfast.  It’s a massive platter of pancakes, more than he could ever eat on his own, with a bowl of fresh fruit on the side—and no bacon.  He used to stick with eggs, bacon, biscuits, all the typical breakfast fare, but Clint lives on carbohydrates.  One day soon, he’ll buy stock in Kellogg’s, General Mills, and IHOP.

 

            Delores sets a carafe of coffee on the edge of the table, and then, a second mug.  “Sure you don’t want anything?” she asks Clint.

 

             “I’m good,” Clint says, but he makes a point of pushing the second mug out of the way until it clinks against the window.

 

            Delores walks away fast enough that she almost steps out of her crocs.  “The point is that she doesn’t remember us,” Phil reminds him as he unwraps his silverware.

 

            Clint spins the bowl of fruit around until he can snag a cube of honeydew melon.  “Before, she wouldn’t remember.  Now, she’ll be trying to forget.”

 

            “You hope.”

 

            “No, I’m counting on it.” 

 

            He sucks melon juice off his fingertips, and Phil forgets momentarily that he’s reaching for the syrup.  Clint’s notoriously bad at mornings, not because he sleeps through alarms—in fact, the only alarms he sleeps through are the ones Phil turns off for him—but because he’s especially stubborn.

 

            And because he’s eating that strawberry in a way that could distract Director Fury.

 

            Phil pours more coffee, takes a sip, and then tucks into his pancakes.   “You do remember I have a meeting, right?”

 

            “Yeah, an hour something.”  Clint’s lips leave a tiny smear of red on the rim of the mug.  “Plenty of time.”

 

            “What if I need to review a file?”

 

            “Over pancakes?  And risk getting syrup on an I-80b form?”

 

            The twist in his voice, the— _teasing_ . . .  There are weaker men, Phil thinks, who’d turn to putty at that.  Or at the tiny smile that’s pressing at the corners of Clint’s mouth.  He takes another bite of pancake and then wipes his lips with his napkin.  “I think we need to discuss the meaning of _security detail_ , Agent Barton.”

 

            Clint’s foot brushes Phil’s under the table.  The touch is brief enough, _fleeting_ enough, that it catches Phil off guard.  He misses the coffee mug by a half inch and has to inhale before he picks it up properly.  This, he decides, isn’t fair.  Babysitting Stark through his—crisis of confidence, followed by all-night driving, and now—

 

            Their eyes meet across the table.  The bite Clint takes from a chunk of cantaloupe is so small, it might as well be a nibble.  “Do we?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.

 

            The look climbs straight into Phil’s belly.  At least, it starts there, but migrates further south in record time.  He manages to maintain his composure and sip the coffee.

 

            “Because,” Clint continues, “I think I need the refresher.”

 

            When his foot returns, Phil almost drops the coffee mug.  Almost.  This is actually torture, he thinks, and proof they need a vacation.  Both of them.  Together.

 

            The feigned look of innocence on Clint’s face could kill a lesser man.  “Sir?”

 

            “I have a meeting,” he repeats, but he’s thinking less about that and more about what he could do given ninety minutes and a lumpy motel mattress.  “And a situation.  In New Mexico.”

 

            “In the ass-crack of nowhere, you mean,” Clint replies.  He takes the mug out from between Phil’s fingers and polishes off the last three swallows.  The last bite of cantaloupe’s the chaser before he leans forward to fill the mug again.  “Think it’s related?”

 

            “Think what’s related?”

 

            “Stark went all—off the reservation on you, right?”  He shrugs.  “Then you get a call about unidentified crap falling from the sky after crazy desert storms.  Maybe it’s some kinda—mad scientist midlife crisis.”

 

            Phil, finally, smiles.  It’s around a bite of pancake, but it touches his eyes.  “Don’t let him hear you talking like that.  He’ll start taking credit for the weather, too.”

 

            Clint snorts and rolls his eyes, but only for a moment.  Then, he cranes his neck, looking for something.  It used to bother his handlers, the ones he had before Phil, the way Clint’d twist away in the middle of a briefing.  He’d focus his eyes on something else, train enough attention on some _other_ stimuli, that they assumed he wasn’t listening anymore, and then they’d—well, “butt heads” was generous.  It’d taken Phil all of ten minutes to realize Clint still _listened_ , even if he didn’t _look_.

 

            “I just mean—”  he starts, but then he’s reaching over the back of the booth.  Phil knows he hasn’t lost his train of thought, just paused it, and that’s alright because Phil’s is paused, too.  Clint’s one of those rare people who would rather stretch and contort than stand up and walk three feet, and that’s what he’s doing.  His hoodie rides up, then his t-shirt, and all Phil can see in that moment is the skin that he’s showing, the six inches between waistband and fabric.  It’s pale, bare, and perfect, with the tapered end of a scar he’s never explained, and—

 

            Clint arches.

 

            His ass comes off the vinyl, hips pressing forward, and Phil swallows his next bite without actually tasting it.

 

            Give him sixty minutes with the lumpy mattress.  Sixty’d be enough.

 

            Clint bounces a little, as he settles, and Phil remembers how to breathe.  “The timing’s weird,” he says, unwrapping the bundle of silverware.  “Like the whole world’s turning upside-down at the same time.”

 

            “Two incidents is hardly the whole world,” Phil points out.  “And, besides, you know as well as I do how often things _actually_ get . . . tangled.”

 

            “Well, yeah.”  Clint cuts a hearty chunk off the side of the pancake stack that’s closest to him.  Like Phil’d purposely ordered more food than he could eat, knowing that he’d have help.  “I’m just saying, it’s a kinda big coincidence.”

 

            “Yeah,” Phil agrees, and reaches for the coffee mug.

 

            Conversation turns to eating, though, with a side of watching one another.  Actually, Phil’s not sure how closely Clint’s watching him, not this morning.  When they first met, long before labels like _handler_ and _subordinate_ , Clint’s careful watching unnerved him.  He felt like some wild animal’s prey, being tracked across a field without anywhere to hide.

 

            Now, when they’re away on different missions—in Santa Barbara or Budapest, Havana or the Hague—he misses the moments where he looks up for no other reason than that he feels Clint’s eyes on him.

 

            He also misses knees bumping under the table, and the times their knuckles brush because they’re reaching for coffee at the same time, too.  He just finds ways to express it without actually— _saying_ it.  Most the time, at least.

 

            Sitwell texts when he’s ten minutes out, and Clint shrugs when Phil relays the message.  He answers the unasked question with, “When I’m done.”

 

            “And if you’re not done in time?”

 

            “You’ll think of something.”  He looks up, still chewing.  “Unless you wanna stick with _security detail_.”

 

            Phil only _just_ contains his smile, but he knows the lines around his eyes are refusing to cooperate.  “How about _he’s insubordinate, stubborn, and wouldn’t wait in the motel room_?”

 

            Clint grins.  “You love it.”

 

            “Hardly.”

 

            “Totally.”

 

            Their ankles brush under the table, but it’s not like before.  There’s no play, no urgent _need_ behind it, just—nearness.  Familiarity, Phil thinks, but not the kind that breeds contempt.  The kind that breeds something else entirely.

 

            He watches Clint cut through the pile of pancake with the side of his fork.  If Sitwell comes and Clint’s still there, he won’t question it.  No one would question it.  Clint—Agent Barton—is his direct subordinate, he comes on all his important missions, he’s worth a half-dozen first-year recruits.  Hell, in some situations, he’s worth a hundred first-year recruits.  Phil could bring him to a meeting with Director Fury, Deputy Director Hill, every department chief, and the President of the United States, and it’d still be the same thing:

 

            Agent Coulson, armed with his one-man entourage, Agent Barton.

 

            Phil, he—likes it that way.

 

            Clint looks up as he polishes off the last off the coffee.  “What?” he asks, eyebrows raised.

 

            He shakes his head.  “Nothing.”

 

            Yeah.  He’s in trouble, all right.

 


End file.
